The most seasoned candidate on the Arlington County Board general-election ballot isn’t any more impressed with ranked-choice voting (RCV) today than she was before June’s Democratic primary.
“Whatever else RCV might do, it doesn’t encourage more civility, and it doesn’t encourage participation in elections,” Audrey Clement said in a post-primary e-mail to supporters.
Clement, an independent, has been running almost continually for a dozen years for local office as what she terms a protest candidate.
In her comments, Clement noted that the five-candidate Democratic-primary field drew a voter turnout of about 20,300, or nearly 3,000 fewer votes than the 2021 Democratic primary held under traditional winner-take-all rules.
While Democratic nominee J.D. Spain Sr. emerged with a primary win, turnout was so relatively light (11% of registered voters) and his first-ballot total was modest (about one-third of all votes cast), so effectively less than 4 percent of the county’s electorate supported him on the first ballot, Clement said.
“It’s hard to see how his support was ‘deep and broad,’” Clement said, deriding a phrase used by FairVote, a ranked-choice advocacy group.
Clement and Spain will share the Nov. 5 ballot with Republican Juan Carlos Fierro and Madison Granger of the nascent Forward Party.
While the County Board general election will (for the first time ever) be held under ranked-choice rules, the political inclinations of the county’s electorate maks it almost a sure bet that Spain will garner more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round and secure victory for the seat being vacated by Libby Garvey.
All other races on Arlington’s Nov. 5 ballot, from president down to School Board, will be conducted under the traditional winner-take-all format.
